Luton tears over 23 seconds
Declan Rice’s winner nestled into the bottom corner on 96:23. An extra 23 seconds of injury time.
This has led to pundit such as Alan Shearer to throw their toys out of the pram about where this extra time came from. He has had support from Luton, Tottenham and west Ham fans.
Firstly, I am sure if it was Newcastle scoring 23s after the minimum of 6 minutes were up, Shearer would not have been prodding the losing manager for a response (side note: fair play to Rob Edwards for batting away his baiting).
Secondly, when the clock ticked over to 90 minutes, the ball was out of play. It did not come back into play until 90:29. Anyone who has watched football (which Shearer et al have watched a lot of of), will know that if the ball is out of play at 90, the referee will tend to only start the injury time once play has restarted. So straight away, due to this delay, play was always going to on to 96:29.
Luton, as all clubs will do, took every opportunity to run down the clock. One throw in took 23 seconds. Takehiro Tomiyasu was sent off for taking a throw in quicker! By the time you add they elongated goal kicks, it should not have been a surprise to anyone that the game was still going on as the clock ticked mid-way through the 97th minute.
It is also fairly normal for ref’s to continue the play whilst a team are attacking. Whilst this does frustate me (time should be up when it is up regardless of where the ball is on the pitch), Martin Odegaard was always going to be allowed to pump the ball in for one last attack.
I bet if it was Luton with the ball on the edge of our box and the ref blew up, the Kenilworth Road air would have been filled with a congeries of boo’s and claims that he blew up early to protect Arsenal.
You then would have had Shearer et al recording the entire time the ball was out of play to highlight that Luton were hard done by.
Finally, injury time is a minimum. If there are further delays during injury time (which there were), the ref can add them on (which he did).
It feelt like throughout the game that Amazon were after a story. They wanted their Brentford moment. The commentators were almost cheering on the home side, and all the pundits bar T) were gutted. Declan Rice ruined their fairytail.
New boys come good
Declan Rice will rightly get the plaudits for scoring the winner. He has been a sensational player and has found a new level in his game.
Whilst at West Ham, there was plenty of debate whether he was World Class, his move to Arsenal has cemented himself as the best defensive midfielder in the world. I could not name anyone better.
When the deal was eventually done for £105m, Hammers fans went into defensive mode, celebrating their windful and saying that Arsenal had overpaid. I think it is now clear that had we paid £150m, we still would not have overpaid.
Scary to think what would have happened to the Premier League had Rice signed for Manchester City.
Rice’s fellow big money summer signing also had a fantastic game against Luton, and perhaps his best Premier League performance in an Arsenal shirt.
The sort of goal he scored was a key reason why he was signed.
With Gabriel Jesus’s movement deep and outwide, Havertz has the awareness to drift into the empty space and toepoke a goal it. Those late runs into the box are what made his name for Leverkusen. His finish against Luton was not too much different to that against Lens!
One area where Havertz is fairly underrated is his aerial play. No player won more aerial duels than the German on tuesday night. And when you consider how Luton play, and the size of their team, that is a huge achievement. He gives us the option to go long and break quick.
Havertz passing still needs to improve, and he needs to get invovled in our build up a bit more (32 passes @ 62% completion v 67 passes @ 89% for Odegaard), but then he is one of these players that is always on the fringes of the game and then comes live in the box.
With 3 goals in his last 4 games, we are now seeing on the pitch what Mikel Arteta spoke about on the training ground. Havertz is clearly a top, top player.
We come away from Luton with 3 points, with the 2 new boys playing a huge part in victory. Onwards we go.
Arteta suspended
So Mikel Arteta got a 3rd yellow card of the season for daring to celebrate a 96th minute winner. His booking was for being a meter out of his technical!
This behaviour by officials just further highlight the point Arsenal have made to the
PGMOL – that Arsenal are officiated differently tro other clubs.
In recent times, we have seen the likes of Robert de Zerbi knee slide onto the pitch, Jurgen Klopp run down the touchline, and Pep Guardiola join celebrations on the pitch. I have no issue with any of these. We want to see passion from players and managers.
Do referees in this country want managers to be robots. To sit there and politely clap and say “well done old chap” to the coach sitting next to them?
It does feel the ref was looking for any reason to book Arteta, knowing it would lead to a suspension. This would then support the Daily Mail-led narrative that Arteta’s behaviour is a danger to grassroot referees.
Arsenal continue to be the poster boys for the Daily Mail after daring to criticise the poor refeering in the Premier League. This despite us having only recieved 2 yellow cards for dissent (against Fulham with 11 and Newcastle & Tottenham with 8).
As for Arteta and his coaching staff’s behaviour, Luton was the 5th booking for our management team. That is less than Brighton and Fulham, with Tottenham and Brighton frecieving 2 reds for coaching staff, and Liverpool and Chelsea getting 1. But Arteta will be the problem…
I am sure between now and Christmas, Arsenal Twitter will highlight plentry of Premier League managers stepping further out of their technical area to celebrate goals and not get booked.
David Raya
When Aaron Ramsdale made his errors against Brentford, I refused to pile-on. I will do the same with Raya.
For Luton Town’s second, a keeper being out jumped and out muscled at a corner happens. Raya is not the first, and will certainly not be the last. Elijah Adebayo is a a 6 4 centre forward and I am sure he will bully other goal keepers this season!
Thierry Henry did a fantastic analysis of Luton’s third.
The mistake looks worse then it did as the ball slide under Raya’s body, but as Henry pointed out, this was because he should have gone with his feet and not dived for it. It was a strong shot by Ross Barkley and by diving, Raya could not get down quick enough.
We are top of the league, let’s back all our players. Not try and pile pressure on one player just because you prefer the personality of another.
UTA!
Keenos
